A Violation of Trust?

A former legislative aide accuses a lawmaker of sexual misconduct.

A former aide to Deputy House Republican Leader Matt
Wingard (R-Wilsonville) has accused him of giving her alcohol when she
was underage, pressuring her to have sex, and keeping her on the public
payroll after she ended the relationship with him and stopped reporting
for work.

The former aide first
approached the Oregon Department of Justice in January with allegations
about Wingard’s conduct, which she says took place in 2010, beginning
when she was 20.

The DOJ, and later
the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office, interviewed the woman. Both
agencies declined to bring charges, concluding there was no crime
committed or the statute of limitations had run out. Neither agency
interviewed Wingard about her allegations.

Wingard, 39, is a
former TV reporter who was first elected to the House in 2008 and is a
rising star in his caucus. In addition to his legislative
responsibilities, he serves as a spokesman for Oregon Connections
Academy, the state’s biggest online charter school.

Wingard acknowledges
the woman worked for him and he had a sexual relationship with her. But
he says the relationship was consensual and he never provided her with
alcohol when she was underage.

“I am confident all the facts will come out and my name will be cleared,” Wingard tells WW.

The former aide, now
23, grew up in Salem and was a student at Portland State University when
she first met Wingard at a 2009 Christmas party held by the Oregon
Federation of College Republicans at the Shilo Inn Suites in Salem. She
declined to talk to WW about her allegations or the investigations.

According to the DOJ
report, the woman says Wingard gave a speech at the party, and later
“the two had a conversation wherein she jokingly stated he should hire
her.”

Wingard did hire her
in early 2010. Not long after, at the age of 20, she attended the
Dorchester Conference, the annual GOP gathering in Seaside. She told a
Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office investigator Wingard gave her beer and
“was persistent that she drink the beer.” She said she felt “dizzy”
after drinking a beer and a half.

“Her legs began to feel numb, and she began to lose feeling in her body,” the sheriff’s report says.

She told the
sheriff’s investigator that Wingard later invited her by text message to
his room, where she found him “in his bed with his shirt off.”

The woman told investigators she can’t remember what happened after that.

“She said the next
thing she knew she woke up in the morning and was in Rep. Wingard’s bed
under the covers, but was fully clothed,” the DOJ report says. “She said
Wingard was next to her on top of the covers, clothed as well.”

After that, she told
DOJ investigators, Wingard “pursued her by constantly asking her out for
drinks [and] dinner and sending her text messages. She said on several
occasions he asked her to send dirty (sexual) text messages to him. She
said she agreed to do this because she felt if she didn’t he would not
talk to her and it made her work environment hostile.”

The report adds,
“There were times when she would not go to dinner with Rep. Wingard, or
would not send the text messages he desired, and he would simply ignore
her for days by not talking to her or responding to emails. She felt
like Rep. Wingard was punishing her.”

Oregon House rules
prohibit workplace harassment, including “any threat or insinuation,
either explicitly or implicitly, that a person’s refusal to submit to a
sexual advance will adversely affect that person’s employment,
evaluation, wages, duties, work shifts, or any other condition of
employment or career advancement.”

The woman told
investigators that, after weeks of pressure, she “finally gave in to all
of Rep. Wingard’s requests” and entered into an “ongoing sexual
relationship.”

Wingard says he never
pressured the woman to have sex. “I had a consensual relationship with
her that lasted for four months,” he says.

Asked whether it is
appropriate for a lawmaker to have sex with a subordinate, Wingard says,
“ I believe that what two consenting adults do is their own business.”

The woman said she
felt uncomfortable with the relationship and broke it off. She said she
often didn’t show up to work, and eventually told him she was quitting.
For a month after she quit, she says, her paychecks kept coming.

Legislative records
show she was on the state payroll from April to December 2010. She was
paid $800 a month as a part-time staffer.

But Wingard denies he
continued paying the woman after she stopped working. “Once she made it
clear she wasn’t showing up, she was not paid any longer,” he says.

Investigators asked
her if she felt forced into any of the sexual encounters she had with
Wingard, and she said no. Investigators concluded there was no crime
involving sex because the woman said she had consented to a relationship
with Wingard.

The
woman also alleged that Wingard “frequently has parties at his residence
in Wilsonville where alcohol is available to minors.” Wingard says that
is false.

On March 3 of this
year, six weeks after she first contacted DOJ investigators, the woman
texted them and made an even stronger allegation regarding the 2010
night at Dorchester.

“I have more to say,” the text message read. “Matt drugged me…. And I have witnesses that know he drugged me when I was 20.”

That’s when the DOJ
referred the case to Clackamas County, where Wingard lives. After
interviewing the woman twice, the sheriff’s office ended the
investigation without contacting Wingard or any of the other people the
woman said had information about her relationship with Wingard.

Wingard says the allegation that he drugged her is absolutely false. “Never,” he says.

Why did the woman
wait nearly two years to report the incidents? She told investigators
she had tried to forget about her relationship with Wingard, but in the
fall of 2011 ran into him twice. Seeing him, she said, prompted her to
take action.

She is “concerned for other women who may work for him,” she told DOJ investigators.

Her allegations have
been reported to House Republican leaders by at least one GOP official
and a party activist who know the woman and vouch for her credibility.

“[W]e don’t want
there to be a Republican ‘conspiracy of silence’ related to any possible
misdeeds by elected officials,” Washington County GOP Chairwoman Rachel
Lucas and her husband, Dan, wrote to House Republican Leader Kevin
Cameron (R-Salem) in a May 14 letter.

Rachel Lucas accompanied the woman to her interview with the Clackamas County deputy. Lucas and her husband gave WW a copy of the letter to Cameron and agreed to speak after the newspaper contacted them.

Dan
Lucas, who edits the Oregon Catalyst, a GOP blog, says Cameron told him
May 17 that, after receiving the Lucases’ letter, he had obtained a copy
of the Clackamas County sheriff’s report.

Dan Lucas says
Cameron assured him he had scheduled a meeting with Co-House Speaker
Bruce Hanna (R-Roseburg) and senior House GOP staff to discuss what to
do about Wingard.

“We’ve never heard
back from Cameron or anybody else,” Lucas says. “It was extremely
disappointing that we didn’t hear anything, and then the first thing we
hear is that [the woman] got a threatening letter from Wingard.”

House
GOP spokesman Nick Smith says Cameron was traveling and couldn’t be
reached for comment. “This is a personal issue for Rep. Wingard, and we
have nothing to say at this time,” Smith says.

Wingard’s behavior has been an issue before. In 2008, when he first ran for his House seat, Wingard volunteered to WW and The Oregonian that in 2002 he had pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault for hitting his 7-year-old son on the head with a screwdriver.

In Salem, Wingard is
co-chairman of the House Education Committee. In 2009, he sponsored a
bill to expand penalties for coaches who sexually abuse young athletes.

Testifying
in support of that bill, Wingard told colleagues that coaches who
exploit the power they have over their players for sexual gratification
are guilty of a “serious violation of trust.”

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